Example of a false consensus
A good example of false consensus is the case of a brand manager at a mobile provider that sells subscriptions with unlimited calling. The brand manager was about thirty, native and regularly called his friends. Why these details? The target group was determined based on these statistics. What turned out? The average immigrant spends armenia phone number library seven times as much money on telephone calls than the average native, mainly because they often call home. The revenue per user is three times higher than for natives. A major mismatch in target group, which caused the mobile provider to miss out on a lot of money.
This explains why I, as a marketer and sophisticated viewer of advertising, found it hard to imagine that such a modest percentage (the remaining 11%) of people are familiar with the jingle. This immediately shows why it is so important to conduct (independent) market research.
Now, this doesn’t just happen to brand managers. Marketers in general should not rely too much on their N=1 experiences. Ipsos has shown in this study that employees in marketing communications differ quite a bit from ‘normal’ people. The study shows that viewing behaviour differs quite a bit from ‘normal’ people. This means that (with the false consensus bias in mind) it is dangerous for marketers to make choices based on gut feeling, and that it is very important to do research on your target group and therefore also your brand assets. From gut feeling to substantiated.
